1960 Trivia, History, and Fun Facts

Quick Facts from 1960

• World Changing Event: The FDA approved the first oral contraceptive pill on May 9, 1960. Within five years, 6.5 million American women were using it. Few inventions in history changed society as rapidly or as fundamentally.
• Top Song: The Theme from “A Summer Place” by Percy Faith and His Orchestra
• Must-See Movies: Spartacus, Ocean’s 11, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Psycho, Exodus, and Swiss Family Robinson
• Most Famous American: Doris Day
• Notable Books: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman
• Loaf of bread: 21 cents; 8 oz Kraft Cheez Whiz: 35 cents; Gallon of gas: 25 cents; First-class stamp: 4 cents
• U.S. Life Expectancy: Males 66.6 years; Females 73.1 years
• U.S. GDP: $526.6 billion; Federal spending: $92.19 billion; Unemployment: 5.5%
• The Funny Duo: Mike Nichols and Elaine May
• The Funny Guys: Bob Newhart and Jonathan Winters
• The New Dance: The Bossa Nova
• The Conversation: Who won the Kennedy/Nixon debates? Radio listeners said Nixon. Television viewers gave it to Kennedy. The difference in their answers changed American politics permanently.
• Doomsday Clock: 7 minutes to midnight

Top Ten Baby Names of 1960

Girls: Mary, Susan, Linda, Karen, Donna, Lisa, Patricia, Debra, Cynthia, Deborah Boys: David, Michael, James, John, Robert, Mark, William, Richard, Thomas, Steven

Fashion Icons and Sex Symbols

Carroll Baker, Brigitte Bardot, Claudia Cardinale, Doris Day, Angie Dickinson, Anita Ekberg, Annette Funicello, Audrey Hepburn, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Julie Newmar, Kim Novak, Leslie Parrish, Stella Stevens, Elizabeth Taylor, Tina Turner, Mamie Van Doren

Hollywood Hunks and Leading Men

Paul Newman, Robert Goulet, Elvis Presley

The Quotes

“Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!” — Candid Camera, CBS

“A boy’s best friend is his mother.” — Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, Psycho

“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” — President-elect John F. Kennedy, preparing his inaugural address, 1960 (The address was delivered January 20, 1961, but it was written and refined throughout the fall of 1960)

32nd Academy Awards

The ceremony was held on April 4, 1960, at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, hosted by Bob Hope.

Ben-Hur swept 11 Academy Awards, a record at the time that stood until Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King tied it decades later. Charlton Heston won Best Actor; William Wyler won Best Director. Simone Signoret won Best Actress for Room at the Top. The film was based on a novel set in ancient Rome and filmed in Italy; it employed 50,000 extras and 100 horses. Its chariot race sequence took five weeks to film and remains one of the most spectacular action sequences in cinema history.

2nd Annual Grammy Awards

Held November 29, 1960. Bobby Darin won Record of the Year and Best New Artist for “Mack the Knife.” The Best Jazz Performance and Best Comedy Performance categories were introduced this year.

12th Primetime Emmy Awards

Held June 20, 1960, at NBC Studios in Burbank. Robert Stack won Best Actor for The Untouchables; Jane Wyatt won Best Actress for Father Knows Best.

Time Magazine Person of the Year

United States Scientists — a collective recognition of 15 American researchers representing the nation’s scientific leadership during the Cold War era, including Linus Pauling, Edward Teller, and James Van Allen.

Miss America and Miss USA

Miss America: Lynda Mead, Natchez, MS Miss USA: Linda Bement, Utah

We Lost in 1960

Albert Camus, French author of The Stranger and The Plague, died on January 4, at the age of 46, in a car accident in France. A train ticket for the same journey was found unused in his pocket.
Boris Pasternak, Russian author of Doctor Zhivago, died May 30, at the age of 70
Clark Gable, actor, died November 16, age 59, from a heart attack shortly after completing filming of The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe
Mack Sennett, silent film director and “King of Comedy,” died on November 5 at age 80
Emily Post, etiquette authority, died September 25, at age 86
Nevil Shute, author of On the Beach,  died January 12, at age 60
Sylvia Pankhurst, suffragette, died September 27, age 78
Oscar Hammerstein II, lyricist (Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The Sound of Music) — died August 23, age 65

The Kennedy-Nixon Debates

On September 26, 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon met at WBBM-TV studios in Chicago for the first televised presidential debate in American history. An estimated 70 million Americans watched.

Kennedy wore makeup and appeared tanned, relaxed, and confident. Nixon had recently been hospitalized for a knee infection, refused makeup, sweated visibly under the studio lights, and looked pale and uncomfortable. Those who heard the debate on the radio consistently said Nixon had won. Those who watched on television overwhelmingly said Kennedy had won.

The contrast established a principle that has governed American politics ever since: in the television age, how you look matters as much as what you say.

Three more debates followed. Kennedy won the presidency by approximately 113,000 popular votes out of 68 million cast, the narrowest popular vote margin of the 20th century. Whether the debates made a difference remains debated.

The Birth Control Pill

The FDA approved Enovid, manufactured by G.D. Searle and Company, on May 9, 1960, as the first oral contraceptive. It was originally approved for menstrual disorders in 1957; its contraceptive use was quietly understood from the beginning.

Within five years, 6.5 million American women were using it. By 1965, it was the most popular form of contraception in the United States. The Supreme Court ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) established the right of married couples to use contraception; unmarried people did not gain that right until 1972.

The pill’s impact on American society, women’s economic participation, and family formation was as significant as any technology of the 20th century.

The U-2 Incident

On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 spy plane piloted by CIA officer Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union near Sverdlovsk. The Eisenhower administration initially claimed it was a weather research aircraft. The Soviets produced the wreckage, the camera equipment, and Powers himself, who had survived the shootdown.

Eisenhower was forced to admit the U.S. had been conducting aerial espionage over the USSR. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev walked out of a planned Paris summit. It was one of the most acute diplomatic crises of the Cold War.

Powers was sentenced to ten years by a Soviet court. He was exchanged in 1962 for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, the famous “Bridge of Spies.”

1960 Pop Culture Facts and History

Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and released June 16, 1960, was shot in black and white on a television production budget of $806,947. Hitchcock purchased the rights to Robert Bloch’s novel for $9,500. The studio thought the project was beneath him. It became the highest-grossing film of his career and one of the most influential horror films ever made.

Standard film screening schedules were unusual before 1960 — most theaters simply ran films on a continuous loop and allowed audiences to enter at any point. Psycho was among the first films to establish fixed start times and refuse late entry, because Hitchcock did not want audiences walking in after the shower scene, having missed the setup. Ushers stood outside theaters with signs explaining the policy. Lines formed around the block.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was published on July 11, 1960. It sold 500,000 copies in its first year and won the Pulitzer Prize. Gregory Peck’s performance as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film was voted the greatest film hero of the 20th century by the American Film Institute. Harper Lee published no other novel for 55 years.

The Twist by Chubby Checker was released on August 1, 1960. On August 6, Checker performed it on The Dick Clark Show. It reached #1 on September 19. It returned to #1 in 1962, making Chubby Checker the only artist to have the same recording reach #1 on two separate occasions.

Motown was incorporated as Motown Record Corporation in 1960 by Berry Gordy Jr. in Detroit. Gordy had borrowed $800 from his family. Within five years, Motown was the most successful Black-owned business in American history and the most successful independent record label in the world.

The first televised presidential debate on September 26, 1960, was watched by an estimated 70 million Americans, roughly 40% of the entire U.S. population. Its effect on political imagery and media strategy has never worn off.

The PLATO computer system, introduced at the University of Illinois in 1960, invented forums, message boards, online chat rooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multiplayer video games, all years before the internet existed. Almost nobody outside the university knew about it.

The laser was first successfully operated by physicist Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu on May 16, 1960. The original device used a synthetic ruby rod. Maiman’s paper describing it was rejected by Physical Review Letters before being published in Nature.

On January 23, 1960, Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh descended to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth, in the bathyscaphe Trieste. They reached a depth of 35,814 feet, approximately 6.8 miles. They spent 20 minutes at the bottom. The only other person to make the trip was filmmaker James Cameron in 2012.

USAF Captain Joseph Kittinger set three records on August 16, 1960, stepping out of a balloon gondola at 102,800 feet above New Mexico: highest parachute jump, longest free-fall (4 minutes, 36 seconds), and first person to break the sound barrier without an aircraft, reaching 614 mph during free-fall. His record stood for 52 years until Felix Baumgartner broke it in 2012.

The Flintstones premiered on September 30, 1960, at 8:30 p.m. on ABC, becoming the first animated series to air in prime time. It was directly inspired by The Honeymooners and originally conceived for adults. It ran until 1966 and spawned a franchise that has never entirely stopped.

The first episode of Coronation Street aired on ITV in the UK on December 9, 1960. It is now the world’s longest-running television soap opera.

The first CERN particle accelerator, the Proton Synchrotron, became fully operational in Geneva in 1960. It remains in service today as part of CERN’s accelerator complex.

The AFL began placing players’ names on the backs of their jerseys in 1960. The Chicago White Sox had started the practice in baseball that same year. The New York Yankees have never adopted the practice for home uniforms, a policy they maintain to this day.

Joanne Woodward received one of the first stars on the newly created Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. The Walk had been dedicated in 1958; the initial stars were installed in 1960.

The first submerged circumnavigation of Earth was completed by the USS Triton on April 25, 1960, in 60 days and 21 hours (Operation Sandblast), traveling entirely underwater with a crew of 183.

The world’s most powerful earthquake ever recorded struck Valdivia, Chile, on May 22, 1960, at a magnitude of 9.5. The resulting tsunamis caused deaths as far away as Hawaii, Japan, and the Philippines.

Seventeen African nations gained independence in 1960, including Cameroon, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Chad, Nigeria, and many others — in what became known as the Year of Africa. Colonial rule on the continent was unraveling rapidly.

Cassius Clay won his first professional boxing match on October 29, 1960, in Louisville, Kentucky, defeating Tunney Hunsaker by unanimous decision. He had won the Olympic light heavyweight gold medal six weeks earlier in Rome. He was 18 years old.

Wilma Rudolph, who had been unable to walk properly until age 11 due to childhood polio, became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics at Rome in 1960, winning the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m relay.

Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia won the Olympic marathon at Rome on September 10, 1960, running entirely barefoot. He became the first Sub-Saharan African to win an Olympic gold medal. His time of 2:15:16 set a world record. He had been given his country’s marathon spot only 40 days before the Games.

KISS — Keep It Simple, Stupid — was noted as a design principle by the U.S. Navy in 1960. It has since become one of the most widely repeated principles in engineering, software development, and management.

The Domino’s Pizza logo has three dots because founder Tom Monaghan planned to add a dot for each new store. He stopped adding dots after the third location, which turned out to be prudent — Domino’s now has over 19,000 locations.

The term “paparazzi” entered the English language from Federico Fellini’s Italian film La Dolce Vita (1960), in which a photographer character is named Paparazzo. Fellini took the name from an Italian dialect word for a buzzing, annoying mosquito.

The largest polar bear on record was shot at Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, in 1960. When mounted, it stood 11 feet 1 inch tall and weighed an estimated 2,209 pounds.

Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the table at the United Nations General Assembly on October 12, 1960, in protest of the discussion of Soviet policies toward Eastern Europe. The image became one of the Cold War’s defining photographs.

The carbon-14 dating method, developed by Willard Libby, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960, having been developed in the late 1940s. It fundamentally changed archaeology, geology, and the study of human history.

The Etch-A-Sketch was introduced by the Ohio Art Company in 1960. It was invented by French electrician Arthur Granjean, who was rejected by toymakers at the 1959 Nuremberg Toy Fair before Ohio Art licensed it for $25,000 and a royalty. It has never stopped being sold.

Barbie turned 1 in 1960, having debuted in March 1959. She had already earned $500 million in sales in her first year. Ruth Handler created her after watching her daughter play with paper dolls and imagine adult scenarios.

Snoopy’s House is Bigger Than I Thought.

The Habits

Reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, or watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in theaters — though you had to arrive on time, which was itself a new experience.

Christmas Gifts and First Appearances of 1960

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, Game of Life, Etch-A-Sketch, Barbie (second year on market), Chatty Cathy, Mattel’s Lie Detector Game, Mr. Machine, Play-Doh Fun Factory

Nobel Prize Winners

Physics — Donald Arthur Glaser (for the invention of the bubble chamber, enabling the study of subatomic particles)
Chemistry — Willard Frank Libby (for developing radiocarbon dating)
Medicine — Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet and Peter Brian Medawar (for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance)
Literature — Saint-John Perse (French poet)
Peace — Albert John Lutuli (South African anti-apartheid leader; award presented in 1961)
Economics — Prize not yet established (first awarded 1969)

Popular and Best-Selling Books of 1960

Dr. Seuss’s ABC — Dr.Seuss
Advise and Consent — Allen Drury
Are You My Mother? — P.D. Eastman
The Chapman Report — Irving Wallace
The Constant Image — Marcia Davenport
For Your Eyes Only — Ian Fleming
Green Eggs and Ham — Dr. Seuss
Hawaii — James A. Michener
To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
The Leopard — Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
The Listener — Taylor Caldwell
Love Is a Special Way of Feeling — Joan Walsh Anglund
The Lovely Ambition — Mary Ellen Chase
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish — Dr. Seuss
Ourselves to Know — John O’Hara
Put Me in the Zoo — Robert Lopshire 
The Sneetches and Other Stories — Dr. Seuss
Trustee from the Toolroom — Nevil Shute

Dr. Seuss published four books in 1960. The man was not taking a year off.

Broadway in 1960

Bye Bye Birdie opened April 14, 1960, and ran until 1961, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical. It was a loving parody of Elvis Presley’s effect on American teenage culture. The Fantasticks opened May 3, 1960, and ran for 42 years — the longest-running musical production in history.

Best Film Oscar Winner

Ben-Hur, directed by William Wyler, won Best Picture at the 32nd Academy Awards in 1960 for the 1959 film year, sweeping 11 of its 12 nominations. It was filmed in Rome with 50,000 extras. The chariot race alone took five weeks to film.

The Bomb

Movie: Can-Can, featuring Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, and Maurice Chevalier, received so much criticism for a can-can sequence that Soviet Premier Khrushchev, visiting Hollywood, publicly called it immoral. It made the film more talked about than it deserved.
TV: The Deputy launched on NBC with a premise so thin that Henry Fonda appeared in only one-third of the episodes, while other actors carried the rest. It lasted two seasons.

Top Movies of 1960

1. Spartacus
2. Psycho
3. Exodus
4. The Alamo
5. Swiss Family Robinson
6. Ocean’s 11
7. Please Don’t Eat the Daisies
8. Can-Can
9. The Apartment
10. Elmer Gantry

Most Popular TV Shows of 1960

1. Gunsmoke (CBS)
2. Wagon Train (NBC)
3. Have Gun — Will Travel (CBS)
4. The Andy Griffith Show (CBS)
5. The Real McCoys (ABC)
6. Rawhide (CBS)
7. Candid Camera (CBS)
8. The Untouchables (ABC)
9. The Jack Benny Show (CBS)
10. Dennis the Menace (CBS)

1960 Billboard Number One Songs

December 28, 1959 – January 3, 1960: Why — Frankie Avalon
January 4 – January 17: El Paso — Marty Robbins
January 18 – February 7: Running Bear — Johnny Preston
February 8 – February 21: Teen Angel — Mark Dinning
February 22 – April 24: The Theme from “A Summer Place” — Percy Faith and His Orchestra (9 weeks — longest run of the year)
April 25 – May 22: Stuck on You — Elvis Presley
May 23 – June 26: Cathy’s Clown — The Everly Brothers
June 27 – July 10: Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool — Connie Francis
July 11 – July 17: Alley-Oop — Hollywood Argyles
July 18 – August 7: I’m Sorry — Brenda Lee
August 8 – August 14: Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini — Brian Hyland
August 15 – September 18: It’s Now or Never — Elvis Presley
September 19 – September 25: The Twist — Chubby Checker
September 26 – October 9: My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own — Connie Francis
October 10 – October 16: Mr. Custer — Larry Verne
October 17 – October 23: Save the Last Dance for Me — The Drifters
October 24 – November 13: I Want to Be Wanted — Brenda Lee
November 14 – November 20: Georgia on My Mind — Ray Charles
November 21 – November 27: Stay — Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs (at 1 minute 37 seconds, one of the shortest #1 hits in chart history)
November 28, 1960 – January 8, 1961: Are You Lonesome Tonight? — Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley had three separate #1 hits in 1960. Connie Francis and Brenda Lee each scored two. The Theme from “A Summer Place” held the top spot for nine weeks, the longest single run of the year. Ray Charles’s Georgia on My Mind won the Grammy for Record of the Year.

1960 United States Census

Total U.S. Population: 179,323,175

New York, NY — 7,781,984
Chicago, IL — 3,550,404
Los Angeles, CA — 2,479,015
Philadelphia, PA — 2,002,512
Detroit, MI — 1,670,144
Baltimore, MD — 939,024
Houston, TX — 938,219
Cleveland, OH — 876,050
Washington, D.C. — 783,956
St. Louis, MO — 750,026

Sports Champions of 1960

World Series: Pittsburgh Pirates (Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off home run in Game 7, the bottom of the ninth, remains the only walk-off World Series-ending home run in history)
NFL Champions: Philadelphia Eagles
AFL Champions: Houston Oilers (the AFL’s first season)
NBA Champions: Boston Celtics
Stanley Cup: Montreal Canadiens
U.S. Open Golf: Arnold Palmer
U.S. Open Tennis — Men: Neale Fraser | Women: Darlene Hard
Wimbledon — Men: Neale Fraser | Women: Maria Bueno
NCAA Football: Minnesota and Mississippi (shared)
NCAA Basketball: Ohio State
Kentucky Derby: Venetian Way

Sports Highlights: Cassius Clay won Olympic light heavyweight gold at Rome, then won his first professional fight on October 29. Wilt Chamberlain scored 58 points in his NBA debut and later pulled down 55 rebounds in a single game, both rookie records. Wilma Rudolph, who could not walk properly at age 11, won three Olympic gold medals. Abebe Bikila ran a barefoot marathon to win Olympic gold and become the first Sub-Saharan African Olympic champion. 1960 was one of the greatest years in sports history.

FAQ — 1960 History, Facts and Trivia

Q: What world-changing medical development happened in 1960?
A: The FDA approved the first oral contraceptive pill on May 9, 1960. Within five years, 6.5 million American women were using it. The pill’s impact on women’s autonomy, economic participation, family planning, and American social culture was among the most significant of any 20th-century development.

Q: Who won the first televised presidential debate?
A: Technically, both sides won their own audience. Radio listeners consistently said Nixon won; television viewers gave it to Kennedy. Kennedy appeared relaxed, tanned, and telegenic. Nixon appeared pale, sweating, and uncomfortable. The debate established that in the television era, visual presentation matters as much as substance.

Q: What was the #1 song of 1960?
A: The Theme from “A Summer Place” by Percy Faith held the top spot for nine weeks, the longest run of the year. Elvis Presley had three separate #1 hits, including Are You Lonesome Tonight? which closed the year at #1.

Q: What famous novel was published in 1960?
A: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, published July 11, 1960. It sold 500,000 copies in its first year, won the Pulitzer Prize, and has never gone out of print. Harper Lee published no other novel for 55 years.

Q: What was the deepest anyone had ever gone underwater in 1960?
A: Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh descended 35,814 feet to the bottom of the Mariana Trench on January 23, 1960, in the bathyscaphe Trieste. No one repeated the feat until filmmaker James Cameron in 2012.

Q: What was the U-2 incident?
A: A CIA U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960. The Eisenhower administration’s cover story collapsed when the Soviets displayed the wreckage and the pilot. The incident derailed a planned U.S.-Soviet summit and intensified Cold War tensions.

Q: What famous movie introduced the concept of fixed screening times?
A: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) was among the first films to require audiences to arrive at the beginning, refusing entry to latecomers. Hitchcock wanted no one to see the shower scene without first meeting the characters. Lines around the block became a marketing tool.

Q: What sports miracle happened at the 1960 Olympics?
A: Several. Wilma Rudolph, who wore leg braces as a child, won three gold medals in sprinting. Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia ran a barefoot marathon to win gold and break the world record. Cassius Clay won light heavyweight gold. It was one of the most remarkable Olympic Games in history.

Q: What musical institution was founded in 1960?
A: Motown Records was incorporated by Berry Gordy Jr. in Detroit with an $800 family loan. Within five years, it was the most successful Black-owned business in American history and had created some of the most enduring popular music ever recorded.

Q: What 1960 Broadway show is still running?
A: The Fantasticks opened May 3, 1960, and ran for 42 years at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York — the longest-running musical production in theater history. It has been revived and continues to be performed worldwide.

More 1960 History and Trivia Resources